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Penn Jillette is No Longer A Libertarian
(lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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I considered myself a Libertarian for a few years. I was a disillusioned Republican during the George Bush days and Libertarianism really grew on me. I voted for Gary Johnson twice.
As I became more concerned about climate change, I could not see a viable Libertarian solution to it. Private business is more than happy to keep chugging away with fossil fuels until it's far too late.
For Libertarianism to work, these same private businesses need to do the right thing voluntarily. In Atlas Shrugged, those businessmen and women are doing what is right for their business and it just so happens to be what is right for everyone else, that isn't always the case. All too often, what is right for business goes against what is right for society. Once I realized this, everything unraveled for me.
So anyway, here I am, years later, voting for Democrats because I've got no other option as the GOP became more and more insane since I left.
Libertarianism also was my first stop out of my childhood religious right upbringing. I still tend to see issues from a libertarian framing -- i.e., if it's not hurting anybody why should the government care? -- but most US libertarians seem weirdly fixated on ideas like "why can't I dump 5,000 gallons of hydrofluoric acid into a hole in the ground if the hole is on my own property?" or "why shouldn't I be allowed to enter into a contract with somebody that allows me to hunt them for sport?" or especially "why can't I have sex with a minor if they say it's OK?", where there's really obvious personal and societal harms involved and the only way that you can think otherwise is if you've engaged in some serious motivated reasoning.
Whereas my thinking these days is more like, "who does it hurt if somebody decides to change their outward appearance to match how they feel inside?" and the like -- i.e., the right to personal autonomy and free expression, rather than the right to do whatever I want to others as long as I can somehow coerce them into agreeing to it. I don't have much patience for the anarchist side of left-libertarianism -- in my experience you need robust systems in place to keep bad actors from running amok, and a state without a monopoly on violence is simply ceding that monopoly to whoever wants to take it up for their own ends -- but that starting point of libertarian thought, that people sold be free in their choices until those choices run up against somebody else's freedoms -- is still fundamentally valid.
Genuine question: why do you care about climate change if you would be dead by then?
Because "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit" - Greek proverb
If we don't cover the things that our children (or nieces/nephews) will benefit from, no one else will. There are no adults in the room. It's just us.
What children? I will not have nieces nor nephews because I do not have first grade brothers or sisters. I mean sorry but I don't care.
Then you're a bad person. It's quite simple.
Whatever quality of life you have enjoyed beyond living naked in a cave eating bugs and berries you owe to the people who came before you. Not just your ancestors, but the people who invented tools and discovered natural laws and organized societies and legal systems, the people who built the cities with their sewage systems and hospitals and electricity, the people who developed fertilizers and antibiotics and undergarnments that don't itch like a thousand angry fleas are having a rave in your crotch. And now, after enjoying the fruits of 10,000 years of civilization, you decide that you're the be-all and end-all of people and everybody who comes after you can go fuck themselves? Bad person. Plain and simple.
To be honest I'm in all to human extinction, actually I'm all for all life extinction. Life is based in predatory model mostly with exception of some plants and bacteria.
You have a very limited view of what life is. I pity you deeply.
And what is life? 70 years is shit is crap is nothing.
Life can be wonderful and precious. If your life in particular happens to be "shit, crap and nothing", are you really so self-centered that you think everyone's life is just like yours and we're all only pretending it isn't?
Life is what you make of it. There are happy people in slums living under awful conditions, and then there are people like Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and obviously miserable. Anybody can be happy and enjoy life with a simple shift of perspective, and work to improve whatever bothers them.
If your life sucks so much that you'd rather all life become extinct, have you considered the possibility that you might have unipolar or bipolar depression? This is not at all a normal way of seeing things, and medication might help you immensely. And if that is the case, then I take back what I said about you being a bad person. Mental illness takes a large toll on our worldview and often renders us incapable of expending the energy to care about anyone other than ourselves. We behave and think just like a bad persom, but it's not actually our fault. We just aren't capable of being any different. I've been there. Thankfully I'm not there anymore.
Or maybe you are the one that is coping. Maybe you are trying to avoid with distractions what live truly is. Life isn't what you make it. Tell that to a disabled person, a cancer kid, etc. if you trully weigh what life is about you gonna realize it. But I do not recommend and prefer to keep being the bad actor in the movie.
I AM a disabled person, sweetie. I have only partial vision in one eye. When my mother left and Dad killed himself as a result, I spent years as a depressed NEET with so little energy to spare that every day I would weigh the pros and cons of shitting the bed so I didn't have to go to the effort to get up and drag my sorry ass to the toilet. I attempted suicide twice, and obviously failed both times, which just made me feel worse - on top of all the shit that made me want to kill myself in the first place, add "too incompetent to even die right" to the list. Great, huh? Then I got proper treatment and slowly shifted my perspective. I'm not "coping", I'm sharing my experience.
One of the main symptoms of depression is being absolutely certain that things will either never change or will only get worse. 10,000 years of human history show this to be a categorically false belief. I'm telling you that it can and does get better, if you do right by yourself.
Like I said, do you really think that out of eight billion humans, everyone thinks and feels exactly like you? That's just absurd. I can't fathom the level of arrogance and narcissism it would take for a healthy person to seriously believe that.
Pure coping. "Proper treatment". Dude I was incapable of even orgasm properly with antidepressants. Psychologists are no different to talk to a fckn LLM. Never again. I will cope with science, art, alcohol but by ANY means the core will change. Everyone can cope however they want.
I was treated with antidepressants for a few years. They didn't help, I couldn't cum either, and also I gained a lot of weight and I slept ten hours a day and still felt groggy when I was awake. Then I went to a new psychiatrist who thought I might have bipolar depression rather than "normal" depression. It's BPD except you don't have the euphoric mania, so it presents like depression. But since it's BPD, it's treated with antipsychotics rather than antidepressants. I got on lithium and brexpriprazol. I did a few ECT sessions. I went to an ayahuasca ceremony. Lo and behold, I got better. The treatment gave me enough energy to change my habits. I started exercising, meditating, I took up old hobbies I had abandoned because I couldn't be bothered. Every small change I made synergized with the others to give me more energy and lessen my burdens. And before I knew it, I was happy and looking forward to tomorrow.
Believing that everyone who is happy is actually faking it is a coping mechanism, and a very bad one at that. It makes you feel slightly less horrible to think that everyone else feels just as shitty as you do. But fortunately, it isn't true. Most people are happy. That's why the people who share your view that it'd be better if we all died off are so few and far between. That's why we laugh and sing and dance and make art and celebrate. The evidence for the existence of actual happiness is overwhelming, and the fact that you still think it's bullshit is undeniable proof that you're ill.
This is a very good thing, because it means it can be fixed. Forget SSRIs, they obviously won't help you. Try antipsychotics, try ketamine, try ECT, try fucking tricyclics or MAOIs or a heroic dose of magic mushrooms if you have to. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work and you stop taking them again. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you refuse to try getting better because you believe there's no such thing, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're going to feel like shit forever anyway, why not feel like shit while trying not to instead of just rolling over and taking it like something that already died but forgot to stop moving?
This is objectively not true at all. Most of people ISN'T happy, they have tons of responsibility so they can't quit. Maybe they earn well so with money they can cope. My art and celebration is different than you, but it's cope. I like depressants, I don't hear voices so antipsycho idk if it's for me. But it still is coping with drugs lol... Most people isn't happy, they are coping with whatever they could: sex, drugs, shopping, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIntgOcWsJg&t=4s
What I said isn't "objectively" true or untrue, as I'm talking about a purely subjective phenomenon: happiness. Your choice of language betrays the radicalization of thought caused by your coping mechanism. You are incapable of seeing reality for what it is - this is the main symptom of every mental illness.
Antipsychotics aren't just for people who hear voices. They're for anyone with a dopamine imbalance. The name just comes from what they were first used for. Likewise, antidepressants aren't just for depression, but for serotonin imbalances. They can also help with anxiety, panic attacks, etc. Bipolar disorder does not respond to antidepressants (because it isn't caused by a serotonin imbalance) but responds to antipsychotics (because it is caused by a dopamine imbalance). As I said, type 2 bipolar can present just like depression, but antidepressants just make it worse while antipsychotics make it better.
There is also a very important difference between "coping with drugs" and using medicine to fix a malfunction in your brain. Let's take diabetes as an example. If someone's pancreas doesn't produce insulin and so they take insulin shots, is that "coping with drugs" and just a way to distract themselves from the reality of diabetes, or are they effectively fixing the problem (no insulin) the best way available (getting insulin from outside)? Furthermore, if they were trying to escape from the reality of having diabetes, they wouldn't take insulin, because only people who admit they have diabetes voluntarily take insulin. I assume this point is not controversial... But suddenly if we replace the pancreas with the brain, "solving a problem" becomes "coping with drugs". It's still the same logic. Problem = dopamine imbalance. Solution = dopamine balancer (antipsychotic).
Three things are obvious to me from this conversation.
One, you're quite an intelligent fellow. You're well articulated, stay on topic and your comments are structured in a logical way.
Two, you're desperately ill-informed about mental health, probably a result of going to a less-than-competent psychiatrist. Or two. Or five.
Three, your disease has advanced to the point where you see no hope for yourself or others and flat out ignore any evidence against your hopelessness by claiming without proof that it's all fake - an extremely irrational position that is incompatible with the intelligence you've shown.
Oh, there's also a fourth thing. It's obvious that you're alive or you wouldn't be replying to me. This means you haven't killed yourself. And that means that you're absolutely, completely full of shit. If you actually believed in all this ridiculous nonsense about how happiness doesn't really exist, you'd have offed yourself by now. You wouldn't even bother talking to me like this. Now, since you're still alive, that means you still have hope. But you're lying to me and to yourself that you don't. This lie is more proof of your disease.
I went through many psychiatrists that misdiagnosed me with depression and treated me with drugs that just made me worse before finding one who finally put me on antipsychotics. I get that you've had your share of failed treatments as well, but if you haven't tried this approach yet, why not give it a shot? What do you have to lose? Why the fuck are you so attached to being miserable?
What do you have to lose? Why the fuck are you so attached to being miserable? To not lose perspective.
And what advantages does your deeply flawed perspective bring you? Does it make you suffer less, or is it just an easy way to lie to yourself?
I am not the one that is lying to himself, it is you, with your coping mechanisms such as Ketamine and antipsychos, lol. And I thought I was coping when I was taking few beers with friends.
The fact that you can't see a difference is very telling. You drink to numb your mind. You take medicine to sharpen it and face your problems head on so you can solve them instead of avoiding them. If both approaches are the same to you, I really wonder why you choose to continue living every day.
Gracias por el link. Mi español no es muy bueno, pero creo que comprendí la letra. ¿De dónde eres? Yo soy brasileño pero vivi un rato en Perú hace muchos años.
Empathy, or caring about how other people are affected, even if it doesn't affect you personally. Empathy is normal and healthy.
Better question is, why are 60+yo Capitalists who already have more wealth than they could possibly spend before they die, so desperate to hold and collect even more wealth?
But most of this people doesn't even exist in the present. I mean, isn't better that stop having kids, you can kill 2 birds this way: Reduce footprint to ZERO, avoid future generations suffering of global warming.
So you don’t feel bad for future humans because they’re assholes for existing?
I can't feel empathy for people that doesn't exist. Simple as that.
How about a 1yo baby that will suffer the effects of climate change their whole life, can you feel empathy for a 1yo baby?
I feel more anger about the parents that brings that child to suffer to this world.
Okay so you're too hateful towards complete strangers to have empathy for a 1yo baby.
Yes, it's an imaginary human being. We can avoid his her birth still.
There's tens of millions of 1yo babies, they are all real, they are not imaginary, and they were all born between 12 and 24 months ago.
I'm not sure how you avoid the birth of someone who was born between 12 to 24 months in the past.
You sound a few fries short of a happy meal.
As I told. I feel more anger with the parents that condemn that kids to the slaughterhouse, knowing all the shit that happens on earth these days.
Okay that confirms I was right, you are too hateful towards strangers even to feel empathy for infants.
Imaginary infants And doesn't change the fact that besides I can feel small empathy, I feel more anger with irresponsible parents, that blocks the rest of my feelings.
I'm talking about real infants, not imaginary. Real.
Do you think they're imaginary just because you can't see them? You haven't cognitively developed object permanence yet?
That would explain why we're talking in circles.
I am telling you: More than empathy I feel anger for the irresponsible parents, under my POV they are the responsible of most problems of this world. You see poor families with few kids that doesn't even have something to eat, more than empathy I feel anger. Sorry.
Yeah, for the third time, I know, you are too busy being filled with hate for complete strangers to feel empathy for real life infants.